The instant invention relates to traps for crawling insects, such as ants.
There is much early interest in crawling insect traps such as evidenced by U.S. Pat. No. 109,282 of Nov. 15, 1870 to Williams; U.S. Pat. No. 140,954 of July 15, 1873 to Rubarth and U.S. Pat. No. 400,460 of Apr. 2, 1889 to Jennings. The Williams' patent describes a truncated pyramidal shaped box open at the top. Suspended from the top is a cylindrical or slightly conical vessel opened at both ends, made of glass or otherwise provided with a highly polished and smoothened inner surface. Food of some type, which is apt to attract the insect, is placed within the box. The insects or bugs supposedly, readily ascend the inclined sides of the box where they can see or perceive the food at the bottom of the same and either drop themselves into the box or descend along the smooth sides of the cylinder from which they allegedly cannot reascend. Rubarth discloses ant traps, which are placed in the opening of a large conical mound of earth at the entrance of an ant nest. The trap is so designed that ants either upon exiting or entering the nest, first walk over a sanded or otherwise roughened surface to afford an easy foot-hold for the ants. Thereafter, the ants cross an annular flange or overhang of glass and fall within the body of the trap from whence they allegedly cannot escape. Jennings shows a box or receptacle of any convenient shape, having outer sides of moderately rough material affording a foot-hold for a crawling insect. A downwardly sloping inner flange is present having a roughened zone extending from the outer edge towards the center and a polished zone extending from the roughened zone to the lower edge of the flange. Both the said zones being located on the same inclined surface. Thus, when an ant or other crawling insect passes from one zone to the other, it is unable to turn around or recover itself and the weight of its body carries it down the polished zone into the trap. All of these traps suffer from the same drawback, that is, ants and other crawling insects, as further described hereinbelow, are capable of walking on glass surfaces and thus can exit any of the above traps.